The European Union’s Code of Conduct Group on Business Taxation announced that it had removed the United Arab Emirates (UAE) from its blacklist of non-cooperative jurisdictions on 10 October following the UAE’s introduction of Economic Substance Regulations and the issue of specific guidance on those regulations by the UAE Ministry of Finance.
The UAE was initially blacklisted in December 2017 because it was perceived as facilitating offshore structures or arrangements aimed at attracting overseas profits that did not reflect real economic activity in the UAE. The removal of the UAE from the blacklist is a reflection of the UAE’s commitment to the international standards set by the OECD and the EU.
This announcement puts the UAE in a comparable position with other countries, notably the Cayman Islands, Jersey, Guernsey, Bahrain and the BVI, which were all removed from the EU’s blacklist after they introduced economic substance legislation before the end of 2018.
